I'm John Bachelor. Bill Rajo, Senior Fellow for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies,

continues with me, and we're very pleased to welcome our guide in these matters,

the experienced at hand of the Middle East, Edmund Fitton Brown,

former UK ambassador to Yemen, a troubled nation,

former UN official dealing with all these troubled nations, now at the FD. Edmund, the headlines in Reuters tells a story of chaos. The lead, Trump says, the Iranian ships that come close to

blockade will be eliminated. In addition, the deadline for the U.S. blockade of Iran's ports passes.

Tehran threatens to retaliate. U.S. blockade of Iran's ports passes. Tehran threatens to retaliate.

U.S. blockade of Iran will be a major military endeavor, say naval commentators.

Oil tankers steer clear of Hormuz ahead of U.S. blockade.

Yes, steer clear. That's a way of not going through.

And finally, just in case we wondered about

Beijing, China calls U.S. Iran ceasefire very fragile, urges unified opposition to escalation.

A very good day to you, Mr. Ambassador. The U.S. Navy is now tasked, according to headlines,

with blockading the Straits of Hormuz,

as far as I can tell, for all passages, including those of to do with Iran or people who've paid

ransom or larceny or protection money to Iran. However, the fundamentals here are that the U.S. is escalating,

and Iran is promising to escalate, and the way it's presented to me is, this is a game of two

people staring across a table. Is there more complicated than that, Mr. Ambassador, because I'm

ready for a third party. Good evening, too. Good evening, John. It's

great to be with you and good evening, Bill, as well. So I think there is a little bit more to it than that.

And I think here, again, we're seeing these very core U.S. communications where this is being

presented as a U.S. block, if you, if you put it

...